Posted
by
kdawsonon Tuesday November 25, 2008 @07:37PM
from the database-creep dept.

An anonymous reader calls our attention to California's familial searching policy, which looks for genetic ties between culprits and kin. The technique has come to the fore in the last few years, after a Colorado prosecutor pushed the FBI to relax its rules on cross-state searches. "Los Angeles Police Department investigators want to search the state's DNA database again — not for exact matches but for any profiles similar enough to belong to a parent or sibling. The hope is that one of those family members might lead detectives to the killer. This strategy, pioneered in Britain, is poised to become an important crime-fighting tool in the United States. The Los Angeles case will mark the first major use of California's newly approved familial searching policy, the most far-reaching in the nation."

I wonder what happens if son/daughter is adopted and doesn't know, yet this shows DNA link to a criminal parent. That's a nasty shock to the system, I can just see it now:

Officer: Hi, can you tell us where that lowlife father of your is?
Kid: He is at work at the moment.
Officer: Yeah, drop the act kid, he ain't worked a day of his life. Now, where is he ya little lying bastard?
Kid: He will come home from work in three hours...

*three hours later*

Officer: This ain't your dad! Quit fucking with us here!
Kid: Whaaaaaaa! (Or any other such life changing crying sound when you suddenly find out you are adopted and your whole life has been a lie)

Great points of this post's parent and grandparent; especially relative to descendants.

Any questions involving genetic information should be examined with a long-term view. Perhaps not now, but think of future Clones. Should a cloned human pay the price of his/her predecessors genetic information? The mistakes they made in their previous life may affect their future life as a new individual. Communities of people, not just atomic families, may be singled out or "behaviorally predetermined" to commit crime simply on genetic heritage, of which they have no control. Perhaps that genetic heritage is combined with economic, credit, health and lifestyle information?

It is only a matter of time until the cost of mapping 'enough'* of every living human's genome will be 'worth it'*. Shortly after, the cost of genome-mapping all available deceased humans will be negligible. The field of medicine will flourish with this information. (You may even gain heath insurance discounts with a year's proof of purchase at the grocery store -- you are rewarded for eating relative to your pre-determined health risks.)

Yet every individual's privacy will diminish with access (any access) to a history of humanity's genetic information. Thus, thinking about DNA databases must be done with a long-term perspective.

* = Where the information's value to society --be it a friendly or otherwise group of people-- outweighs the cost of gathering it. Perhaps the equivalent cost of fingerprinting every newborn baby equals the cost of genome mapping every newborn baby.

Or imagine a tool like this in the hands of Hitler. That's what's most wrong with this whole thing, the power it gives to someone over other people. Anonymity and privacy, being shielded and safe from some paternalistic overseeing power entity should be a right. Power should be given to government only as much as necessary. Such databases should be in the private sphere, held by someone like the clergy with the "seal of the confessional", or by attorneys in a fashion similar to attorney-client privilege. We need a system of internetized public notaries/attorneys holding confidential private information, regarding issues of identity, privacy, will/testament etc. Some kind of distributed database with confidentiality barriers. Queries run against it, and people having to give consent before answers are released. Government access to it should be absolutely limited, with very strict rights and needing a warrant. In fact no central databases should exist, but some kind of public key/private key system published by many attorneys, or public notaries, from which matches can be found, such as relatives, or criminals, without revealing identity. To a posted public key search the other local small databases should react, and if they find themselves to be a match to a request, they should ask the owner of that DNA whether he would like to reveal his identity to the query. Of course you would find no criminals this way, because who would confess, yes, I'm the one. But that's exactly what the 5th amendment is about, it's not about making law enforcement easy, to the contrary, protecting individual liberty at the price of "security", or "ease of law enforcement."
Compiling databases about everybody in the name of security - well, you know what the founding fathers said: those who sacrifice liberty for security will get neither. A social security number databases tagging everyone for tax collection purposes should suffice. Fingerprint databases feel already too private, but all they reveal is your physical presence at a location, if you didn't wear gloves. And they are harder to plant than dna samples of hair, blood, etc. Fingerprints in the name of law enforcement, I can agree to that, because they don't contain much else about you. DNA, that's a whole other beast than a fingerprint. Occasional DNA tests by police, comparing suspects to locally found evidence could be OK, with the data returned to the owners, or owner's assigned attorney/public notary after the completion of the trial. It should not be allowed to be archived, even if it means a whole lot of wasted work, and having to redo everything over and over. Or who do you trust?
You should not feel more secure because of the databases compiled in the name of security, if anything, fear some coup, some power takeover at the top by some mad men. Then imagine what power they will have over you to deride you and ride you to hell and back, simply because they feel like it. And you're at fault, who previously sacrificed your privacy and anonymity in the name of security. What security? If you have many small localized/secret databases exchanging information only as needed, in case of a power coup at the top, well, my neighborhood notary public might be willing to hide my DNA from the new government, just like some people were willing to hide jews during the Nazi regime. People being able to disobey laws is a prerequisite of liberty. Where is the guarantee that we will never have another criminal regime like that in power, coming up with laws that are criminal. The time to defend is now. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Law enforcement is important, but so is the 5th amendment, which is more important than law enforcement itself. So how can you hide your DNA, how can you stay anonymous, retain your privacy in this world? Is that even possible? No. But at least we could have a makebelieve, pretend to respect each others rights to privacy world. Anytime you give blood, or a hair sample, for a simple thing as a drug test, others have your DNA, if that sample is tied to you in

Paragraphs man, paragraphs! It's a wall of bloody text up there. Not to mention a premature and gratuitous execution of Godwin's Law That said:

Power should be given to government only as much as necessary. Such databases should be in the private sphere, held by someone like the clergy with the "seal of the confessional", or by attorneys in a fashion similar to attorney-client privilege. We need a system of internetized public notaries/attorneys holding confidential private information, regarding issues of identity, privacy, will/testament etc.

So, government bad, but combining the clergy and attorneys "in the private sector" WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong?!? Or in other words, what we need to do is create another quasi-governmental agency (that answers to whom?) to entrust this super secret information to, but since it isn't called "government" it's somehow better than what it really is?

You then go on to say that this entire mythical structure you've created would be useless because they wouldn't actually give out the information law enforcement is looking for. So why the hell are you suggesting we create it in the first place?

You're entire post can be reduced to, "No! The gub'mint can't have my bodily fluid data." Saving you time you could use to add another layer to your tinfoil hat and haul a few more wheelbarrows of dirt out of your survivalist's bunker.

There is no overreaches. The information is already here. It just needs to be exploited.
Abuses and opression didn't wait DNA to take place. Just look at all the innocent (mostly black) people who spent 20 years in prison waiting for death before being cleared by DNA analysis. Before DNA, "similarities" in hair texture was enough to convict someone (especially young black males.)

But that's DNA comparison. That is not a "global DNA database" as you put it. A global database would(at least in my inference) contain everyone's DNA and that would lead to loads of potential abuses. See all the comments to this article for examples.

I had a conversation and a dream about this just last week. No joke. And this time your tin foil hats won't help you.

I think the technology is there for the government to take genetic samples from everyone in the U.S. armed forces, and thereby build a database in which they could match any found genetic material by gene clade, and describe your relationship, and triangulate your placement in the larger family tree, with a reasonable degree of certainty.

There was a similar issue in Italy. If you are a foreigner (from some non-EU country) legally working in Italy, and you want your family to join you, you can apply for them to get a visa. Since some of the countries these people come from have very poor records on this type of stuff, there was a proposal to verify this (no idea if it was accepted) with a DNA test, to see if those you claim are your children really are.

Big brother issues aside, the problem is that some children may be adopted, and that the issue of parenthood is not as clear-cut as we would like to think. As well as the old latin saying:

I wonder what happens if son/daughter is adopted and doesn't know, yet this shows DNA link to a criminal parent.

Although your idea is interesting, your logic is faulty.

If an adopted child has a birth parent who is a criminal and the child has DNA in the database, then police would want to contact the child to find the birth parent. But, they would know the child is adopted, since the only way to locate them would be to go through adoption records.

The reverse (child given up for adoption who is a criminal, and birth parent is a near match in the database) is a little different, but the parent usually knows they have

The chance may be very small, but if I share 1/4 of the markers with a suspect (as a sibling would) then I have to deal with hassle of being questioned by the feds. It's profiling. You can't pull over everyone driving a lexus in a low income neighborhood looking for stolen cars and you can't question everyone who has a given number of repeats at a certain locus in hopes of finding a criminal.

I suppose this might be slightly off-topic, but one concern I have with the use of DNA evidence is that, now that everybody knows about DNA evidence, what's to stop someone from planting DNA evidence at a crime scene? Splash some body fluids here, drop some hair there, and smear some skin cells at a strategic location, and voila "we have DNA evidence that places the defendant at the scene of the crime."

Splash some body fluids here, drop some hair there, and smear some skin cells at a strategic location, and voila "we have DNA evidence that places the defendant at the scene of the crime."

Congratulations on stumbling on the plot from GATTACA [imdb.com]. But your +n insightful is deserved because of the twist--although I've heard that prostitutes sell used condoms for this very reason. I can't find any links on the web to this effect so maybe its simply a urban legend. Hopefully defense attorneys with a modicum of intelligence will figure out that they can use planted DNA evidence as a defense.

Well, as someone who used to live a truck stop I can tell you that many hookers are junkies and will be happy to sell you ANYTHING for cash. So I doubt it would be real hard to wave a twenty in front of a hooker and get anything you wanted, especially something she wouldn't be able to normally sell like a used condom.

Of course this gets even worse if you think about it. How many times have YOU left DNA that could be recovered by anyone in a public place? A coke can, those of us like me who smoke leaving our butts in a public ashtray, etc. And as DNA gets used more and more it will be in a criminals best interest to pick up something like that, if for no other reason that it adds to the chance that you could throw them off the trail. And with WAY too many jurors watching CSI all the will have to say is "DNA evidence" and you ass is toast.

http://www.ahealthyme.com/topic/pipes [ahealthyme.com]
Decades ago, doctors began to notice high rates of tongue cancer in pipe smokers. Since then, pipe smoking has been shown to cause cancer of the mouth, lip, tongue, throat, larynx, and lung, Thun says. According to Thun, pipe smokers may also increase their risk of contracting other cancers that plague cigarette smokers: cancer of the pancreas, kidney, bladder, colon, and cervix as well as leukemia and diseases such as chronic obstructive lung disease, stroke, and cor

While performing the autopsy on Newlands' body, Warner finds a plastic tube of blood in his upper arm. He was the father of Morris' baby, but he wasn't the Honey Rapist. He put the tube with someone else's blood in his arm to beat the paternity test. Unfortunately for him, that someone else was a previously unidentified child rapist.

Rape caseOn the night of 31 October 1992, Schneeberger sedated his 23-year-old patient, Candice, and raped her. While Versed -- the anesthetic he used -- has strong amnesiac effect, Candice was still able to remember the rape. She reported the crime to the police.

Schneeberger's blood sample was, however, found not to match the samples of the alleged rapist's semen, thus clearing him of suspicion. In 1993, at the victim's request, the test was repeated, but the result was negative, as well. In 1994, the case was closed.

Candice, still convinced that her reminiscences were true, hired Larry O'Brien, a private detective, to investigate the case. He broke into Schneeberger's car and obtained another DNA sample, which, this time, matched the semen on victim's panties and pants. As a result, a third official test was organized. The obtained blood sample was, however, found to be too small and of too poor quality to be useful for analysis.

In 1997, Lisa Schneeberger found out that her husband had repeatedly drugged and raped her 15-year-old daughter from her first marriage. She reported him to the police, which ordered a fourth DNA test. This time, multiple samples were taken: blood, mouth swab, and hair follicle. All three matched the rapist's semen.

[edit] ConvictionDuring his 1999 trial, Schneeberger revealed the method he used to foil the DNA tests. He implanted a 15 cm Penrose drain filled with another man's blood and anticoagulants in his arm. During tests, he tricked the laboratory technician to obtain blood sample from the place the tube was planted.

He was found guilty of sexual assault, of administering a noxious substance, and of obstruction of justice, and received a six-year prison sentence.

Candice, still convinced that her reminiscences were true, hired Larry O'Brien, a private detective, to investigate the case. He broke into Schneeberger's car and obtained another DNA sample, which, this time, matched the semen on victim's panties and pants. As a result, a third official test was organized. The obtained blood sample was, however, found to be too small and of too poor quality to be useful for analysis.

So it wasn't useful for any analysis. On the other hand the reason he was convicted was because of this other portion the person's post:

In 1997, Lisa Schneeberger found out that her husband had repeatedly drugged and raped her 15-year-old daughter from her first marriage. She reported him to the police, which ordered a fourth DNA test. This time, multiple samples were taken: blood, mouth swab, and hair follicle. All three matched the rapist's semen.

The "illegally obtained evidence" laws generally pertain only to police. In some states, evidence obtained illegally by a private citizen might be perfectly admissible. Though I do not agree with that policy, nevertheless it is up to the individual states.

The private investigator, while finding evidence that might convict, could find himself up for criminal charges regardless of whether the evidence he found were admissible. It is a pretty big risk. Private investigators are not allowed to break into car

Here in Denmark during some riots in the spring the police raided several apartments illegally, they where searching for some of the instigators - while raiding they came across different illegal things like drugs and weapons, while the searches where illegal, so was the items found and there is no getting out of jail free card for those implicated.

Wrong. If, during the legal course of police activity, there is probable cause, the item may be seized by the plain view doctrine [wikipedia.org]. There are restrictions defining "the legal course of police activity", such as the officer may not be searching for anything other than what is in the warrant, the officer may not used enhanced observation, the illegality must be "immediately apparent", etc.

The fourth amendment [wikipedia.org] disallowed general search warrants, which allowed searching without specifying a crime or the evi

that's insane. i wonder how far in advance he knew about the blood test. seems like that type of operation would be a pretty invasive procedure if you're gonna make it look convincing. and it would take a while before the stitches could be removed and scarring went away.

in any case, i don't think there's anything wrong with searching for similar DNA matches as long as law enforcement treat it as such. it's just like searching for a suspect based on a physical description. yes, you'll have to interrogate peo

That's why I always plant samples of my worst enemies hair, skin, and (ewww!) bodily fluids all around my house, so that when somebody tries to frame me, they will wind up framing my enemies instead! But seriously, if somebody that hates you that much has access to your DNA samples, you've already got some serious problems! My advice to you would be to stop screwing people that want to frame you for murder! While this might make a great episode of CSI:Geek Squad, I'm pretty sure most of the readers of slash

Remember that law enforcement agencies keep the raw blood/hair/whatever sample. So, suppose you've got a guy who has been in and out of prison a few times and now is being investigated for another crime. The authorities are pretty sure he did it, but don't quite have the evidence for a conviction. It would be pretty convenient just to splash some of that previously collected sample around and guarantee a conviction. I think that is the parent's concern here.

A single hair is easy to plant, granted, but exactly how easy is it to get your hands on body fluids or sufficient amounts of correctly identified skin cells? Anyone who would have sufficient access to your body fluids (a doctor or a lover) would also be sufficiently close to the case at hand to also be in the police's list of plausible suspects. It's not only about DNA either - finding your hair at a crime's location will not make you guilty if fifty people and surveillance cameras can positively locate yo

What happens when 23andme.com makes a Facebook app that lets you find other people on Facebook to friend based on how close your genetic profiles match, or certain traits you share? It's more likely than you think, and I say this as someone who uses Facebook AND has had a genetic profile done through 23andme.com.

because you want to date your cousin? or because you want to find people who are susceptible to the same diseases as you?

genetic profiles don't seem very useful for social networking. they don't describe personality traits. at most you might be able to find people who share the same mental health issues as you (e.g. ADHD/ADD, bipolarism, schizophrenia, Asperger syndrome, etc.), but it wouldn't be much help in finding friends or potential dates.

Your argument is based on the assumption that the only reason someone might use a social network is for dating reasons. I think it is likely that many would be interested in the idea of connecting to other family branches. Genealogy is already an interest and hobby of many.

no, it's not. it's based on the assumption that social networks are for social networking, that is, meeting new people. which could be for romance, for friendship, or for professional/business connections. but none of those objectives would be served by genetic profile matching.

things like personality, interests/hobbies, tastes (in art/music/literature/film/etc.), occupation or professional interests, goals, etc. are all major factors in social networking whether you are looking for romance, friendship, or

What the hell are you talking about? First, spousal privilege only applies to married couples. Second, there is nothing to stop someone from voluntarily testifying out of moral duty (though, in some states I believe that a spouse cannot testify even if he/she wants to under certain circumstances).

One of the core protections in the US legal system is that you cannot be made to testify against a close relative.

I am pretty sure that is not true.

IANAL (and IORAL, but that's another subject) but my lay understanding is that a spouse can not be forced to testify because legally husband and wife are the same entity and thus it would be a violation of the 5th amendment, the right to refuse to be a witness against oneself.

Hubby: Boy, Honey! That was a rough day! Do you have any idea how hard it is to chop up a guy with a Ginsu knife? We never thought Tony Da Rat would fit in that suitcase!

The wife can't testify or be made to testify about Tony Da Rat's tragically funny disposal. Her husband related it to her (assuming no one else was around) as part of the marital confidential communication.

Scenario #2: Wife greets Mobster Hubby after hard day's work

Wife: Awww...honey. Looks like you had a rough day. Let me wash that bloody shirt. What do you want me to do with the head in the bowling bag?

The wife canbe made to testify about the bloody shirt, the head in the bag, or anything else she directly sees, hears, touches, etc.

The point is that it's not her privilege or choice...it's her husband's. He can refuse to let her testify about confidential communication--she can't just go forth and start spouting it off...not if it (or any subsequent evidence) is to be used in court.

The police recorded a telephone conversation between defendant and his wife in which he admitted to having oral sex with the wife's daughter. This recording was admitted into evidence. The defendant claime

<i>One of the core protections in the US legal system is that you cannot be made to testify against a close relative.</i>

Fifth Amendment objections are besides the point here. There are serious objections to be made to this that are based on the Fourth Amendment. It's as if we were to tap the phones of everyone with a relative in jail. The people have a right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. I think that includes DNA.

The privilege not to testify against close relatives is part of English Common Law, which precedes and often transcends the US Constitution. It's where the right of Habeas Corpus comes from as well.Then there are more specific laws, in California http://law.justia.com/california/codes/evid/970-973.html

IANAL either, but the 5th amendment only protects against self-incrimination. Anyone else, even your SO, you can be ordered to testify against.

IANAL either, but IIRC, a wife/husband can *not* testify (voluntarily or otherwise) against his/her spouse and relate information told to him/her "in confidence" by the spouse. Information given to a spouse is deems "privileged", the same as information a person gives to an attorney or therapist. I *think* that evidence can be suppressed if it was obtained in violation of "spousal privilege" (for instance, if a husband tells his wife where he hid the gun, and she tells the police, the gun may be deemed inadmissible as evidence).

The spouse *can* testify (voluntarily or otherwise), but only regarding things that he/she witnessed. For instance, a spouse can be forced to answer the question "Did you see your spouse hit the neighbor with a baseball bat?".

I dont know how the Brits let the authorities get aways with it. But relative search is routine in Scotland Yard. Also global DNA collections in local neighborhoods is routine. And keeping data forever is routine. The Brits just bend over and take it.

1) You are identified as a near match. All of your relatives are now suspects.2) Near match doesn't mean the perpetrator is a close relative of yours. Police waste their time on an extensive bad lead and fail to solve the crime.

The problem with these tests is that they don't identify enough of the genome to operate in this fashion. They are really only suited for conclusively ruling out a suspect, not for identifying one. The odds of a false positive are much higher than is reported, and going up all of th

Its only minor until the CIA or the NSA decides its in the interests of national security to force the appearance of a childs father by locating the child through that national DNA database and taking them into custody and threatening to do bad things.

Personal family experience: What do you do when you are the one escapee from three generations of Manson family? Every time one of your SOB brothers, sisters, cousins, or creepy Uncle Carl gets into trouble, you get rounded up with the usual suspects and grilled like a cheese sandwich from Mel's Diner!

I've got a sister-in-law who's a great, clean, upstanding citizen. Unfortunately...her family has about 3 generations of DWT spread across 4 counties. Why should she have to recite her family tree and tes

Go to prison.I read somewhere that it will be an offence to not carry your new ID card at all times, and fineable to not update the authorities in a timely manner if you move house. So they can stop you at any time and have a ready excuse for the intrusion. Just say no and mean it. I hope enough people will resist so that prison becomes unfeasable. This techno equivalent of an ID tattoo must be resisted. I am not a slave, and I am not a piece of inventory. I will not be catalogued.

I can understand how convicts, felons, suspects, and arrestees get their DNA thrown into a federal database, but how do they get the DNA of their family members if crime doesn't happen to run in the family? Where are all these DNA samples coming from?

Because daddy got convicted in a DUI 10 years ago, the computer can now match the son's DNA they recovered from a rape victim as being related to daddy. What greatly limits the number of people they have to examine, and also will give the police probably cause for obtaining DNA search warrants on all relatives.

I can understand how convicts, felons, suspects, and arrestees get their DNA thrown into a federal database, but how do they get the DNA of their family members if crime doesn't happen to run in the family? Where are all these DNA samples coming from?

Sperm/Blood donors?

People crossing the border? (ok... currently just being photographed and fingerprinted afaik... but DNA is next...)

People subjected to drug tests?

People subjected to 'reference/elimination samples'?... (ie you were attacked, and now we need your blood sample, so know which blood is the attackers and which is yours...)

Anyone treated in hospital is likely to fill out a form asking if their DNA can be used for medical research. Anyone who has used a genealogical DNA service (and there are many) or one of the genetic disease detection services (there are rather fewer of those, deCODEme being one of the better-known) has their DNA on file on the service's database. Now, whilst there is some protection from unscrupulous departments abusing these kinds of socially-provided services, "law enforcement" gets a LOT of leeway when

Anyone treated in hospital is likely to fill out a form asking if their DNA can be used for medical research.

Really? Where? I've never seen such a clause at any hospital or clinic that I've worked at and it would seem to be in violation of most standards for 'informed consent'. Typically, you have to consent for a specific research protocol and be given the pros and cons of doing so. Exceptions exist for things like CPR registries (where it becomes difficult to get the unconscious patient to sign the i

Exactly, and there are a few other problems that might pop up when matching familial DNA. There do not seem to be any privacy issues addressed here, nor any concern for the rights of citizens.

If you look exactly like someone that just robbed a bank, you might get stopped walking down the same street. If you happen to have 99% of the same DNA as someone that just robbed a bank, there should not be much cause for searching your person or papers.

This is only a blaspheme away from searching everyone's DNA to eliminate them from criminal prosecution. Everyone is guilty till proven innocent. On top of that, 'if you have nothing to hide, give us your DNA' is NOT the right solution. Warrants should not be issued on the idea of similar DNA alone.

Would a man who is step father to 3 good boys, and unknowingly father to a son in another city of the same state have to endure the searching and police BS, as well as his entire family enduring it simply because his DNA was similar to the DNA found at a crime scene?

This can be good for a marginal minute percentage of the crime fighting. The rest of the time it will be used for pure terrorism, the kind that only police states can generate.

incredibly rare, but sometimes two fraternal twins will fuse while still blastocysts. so the dna of two seperate individuals form different organ lines in one individual. so your blood and kidneys and stomach might be from one person, while your brain, skin and lungs might be from another. most chimeras go through life never knowing what they are, but every once in awhile, a blood test reveals that, for example, a mother isn't even the mother of her own children (her womb is from a nonexistent twin):

Lydia Fairchild was pregnant with her third child, when she and the father of her children, Jamie Townsend, separated. When Fairchild applied for welfare support in 2002, she was requested to provide DNA evidence that Townsend was the father of her children. While the results showed Townsend was certainly the father of the children, the DNA tests indicated that she was not their mother.

This resulted in Fairchild being taken to court for fraud for claiming benefit for other people's children or taking part in a surrogacy scam. Hospital records of her prior births were disregarded. Prosecutors called for her two children to be taken into care. As time came for her to give birth to her third child, the judge ordered a witness be present at the birth. This witness was to ensure that blood samples were immediately taken from both the child and Fairchild. Two weeks later, DNA tests indicated that she was not the mother of that child either.

A breakthrough came when a lawyer for the prosecution found an article[2] in the New England Journal of Medicine about a similar case that had happened in Boston, and realised that Fairchild's case might also be caused by chimerism. In 1998, 52-year old Boston teacher Karen Keegan was in need of a kidney transplant. When her three adult sons were tested for suitability as donors, it was discovered that two of them did not match her DNA to the extent that her biological children should. Later testing showed that Keegan was a chimera, a combination of two separate sets of cell lines with two separate sets of chromosomes, when a second set of DNA was found in other tissues[3] This DNA presumably came from a different embryo from the one that gave rise to the rest of her tissues.

anyway, in csi, the aberation was used to good effect: the killer knew he would get away with the crimes because his dna from the crime scene would not match the dna from his lab tests. but of course, the dna would indicate the killer was a brother of the prime suspect, because half the dna would match his phantom brother (which puts a twist on the subject of this story: if relative dna banks enjoy common use, a lot more chimeras out there are going to come to light)

most of the episode the csi investigators run after one brother of the suspect after another, in a fruitless red herring chase to find the dna of a brother who did not exist, except inside that of the killer

Todd has four living brothers, and one who died, named Joss. Sara questions fraternal twins Larry and Roger Coombs, who own a car repair shop together. Brass talks to one of the brothers who is a police officer, but the CSIs are unable to locate Kevin Coombs, another brother....

Sara locates Kevin living on the edge of town in a trailer. He is called in for questioning, but the CSIs attention again alights on Todd. A strand of hair was found on Lindley's jacket, and the DNA is an exact match for Todd. When Grissom examines him, he notices some odd markings on his back.

Grissom hits the books and reads up on fraternal twins and Chimeras. He brings Todd into the interrogation room: he's cracked the case. Todd is a Chimera. He should have had

Interesting.... I know a woman who had two complete sets of interal reproductive organs. I'd speculated that this was the result of a partial twinning early in fetal development.

She has two daughters. Occurs to me that if DNA tests were to show that the two have "different mothers" this would be evidence of a merged (chimera) blastocyte, whereas if they have the same mother, it could be evidence of a failed split equally early in mom's fetal development. (Not definitive for this, tho, since they might by ch

Funny thing about matching possible Family Members.Depending on how good of DNA profile they took a Lab can match 99.9% Match. That means 1/1000 people of the same race could be the criminal real parent or sibling. If the DNA profile is very detailed the odds are 1/100,000 people of the same race. So theyâ(TM)re going to be a-lot of innocence people harass by the police.

Now California police also reserve the right to take DNA from anyone they arrest for any reason. Which means if they can ever make the process an order of magnitude cheaper and faster, they could assemble a very large database very quickly with just the laws already on the books.

It seems lazy lawmaking to me that CA would put some law on the books and just wait for problems to arise.

One would have thought that with a week or two on ask slashdot, a whole bunch of the more obvious problems with this approach could have been forestalled. And with another few weeks of expert review even more simple constraints could have been devised.

It seems to me inevitable that this approach to investigation will only get more prevalent, so I don't see any reason why CA could not have spent some time to try and get some of the details right in advance.

How about introducing a law with some overly-strict limitations and then relax them over time instead of introducing an overly-loosely managed system and then going back to make it right after it's ruined a few peoples lives.

Why not store DNA records for everyone? It would help cops zero in on all kinds of criminals. The goal is to catch every criminal for every crime. People who felt DNA had been planted could still offer a defense. Also people trying to plant false DNA samples would be quite likely to leave their own DNA while doing the planting.
It would be interesting to live in a society with zero lies and zero crimes. Keep in mind that popularity would not matter much at all as

IIRC, DNA matching is done based on 'junk' DNA. Assuming the particular markers used actually don't do anything, I'd be the first to sign up for an injection of a virus that will randomly change those markers around. Let them find me by my DNA when every cell has a different sequence.

And be subject to unreasonable and unwarranted search and seizure, I wouldn't have served in the Army.

Were you DNA tagged for identification? It always made me nervous - a DNA record possibly subject to a Freedom of Information Act request (albeit somewhat far-fetched). Good intentions with lots of abuse potential.

And be subject to unreasonable and unwarranted search and seizure, I wouldn't have served in the Army.

Were you DNA tagged for identification? It always made me nervous - a DNA record possibly subject to a Freedom of Information Act request (albeit somewhat far-fetched). Good intentions with lots of abuse potential.

If I recall correctly, the law requiring DNA samples from servicemembers for remains identification forbade the use of that data set use for other purposes.